Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens

by Michael Gilbert

  “So that’s why you asked us to keep an eye on their Trade Commission.”

  “That’s right. We thought it might give us a lead.”

  “Well, we’ve got something for you. Whether it’s a lead or not, I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me.”

  Mr. Rathbone went across to a cabinet labelled “Export Samples”, unlocked it, and extracted a folder.

  “The only thing we’ve noticed which is in the least bit odd, is that one of their chauffeurs has been paying regular visits, after dark, to a small place called the Hotel Continental. It’s a moderate-sized dump in the Place Languedoc. Not too expensive, much used by business men from England, civil servants coming to conferences, Government delegates, and folk of that type. The sort of place where they serve bacon and eggs for breakfast without being asked.”

  “And what does the chauffeur do when he gets there?”

  “He disappears into the kitchen. What happens after that, we haven’t been able to find out.”

  “Possibly he has a girlfriend among the kitchen staff.”

  “Maybe. When he’s not being a chauffeur, he’s a colonel in the Chinese Army, so I think it’s unlikely.”

  “Even colonels have human feelings,” said Mr. Behrens. “But I agree. There might be something in it. Could you get a list of all the guests – particularly English guests – who have stayed at the Continental during the past six months?”

  Mr. Rathbone extracted a list from the folder and said, “Your wishes have been anticipated, sir. It goes back to January.”

  Mr. Behrens studied the list. Two names on it, which occurred no less than four times, appeared to interest him.

  The prison interview room was quiet and rather cold. Punchy Lewis, in custody, looked a smaller, less magnetic figure than Punchy Lewis on a platform. His thin white face was set in obstinate fines. He said, “It’s bloody nothing to do with you where I got the money from. It’s not a crime in this country to own money, or have they passed some law?”

  “If you don’t realise the spot you’re in,” said Mr. Calder, “it’s a waste of time talking to you.” He got up and made for the door. A policeman was sitting outside it, his head just visible through the glass spy-hole.

  “No-one’s persuaded me I’m in a spot,” said Lewis. “I didn’t do anything. If the police charge in while I’m speaking, and get roughed up, they can’t blame me. I didn’t incite anyone. Every word I said’s on record. I’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  Mr. Calder perched on the corner of the table, like a man who is in two minds whether to go or stay. He sat there for a long minute while Lewis shifted uneasily in his chair. Then he said, “I don’t like you. I don’t like the people you work for. And if I didn’t want something out of you personally, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you. But that’s the position. You’ve got one piece of information I want. It’s the only thing you’ve got for sale. And I’ll buy it.”

  “Talk straight.”

  “You think you’re going to be charged with incitement or assault, or something like that. You’re not. The charge is receiving stolen goods. And you’ll get five or seven for it.”

  “The money, you mean? Talk sense, man. I didn’t know it was stolen.”

  “That’s not what the police are going to say. Do you know where that money came from? It was lifted from a bank by the Barron gang last year.”

  “And just how are they going to show I knew that?”

  “Be your age. They’ve already got two witnesses lined up who saw Charlie Barron handing it to you in a Soho club.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Calder calmly. “It’s a lie. But it’s what they’re going to say all the same. They don’t like having their chaps kicked on the head. They’re funny that way.”

  “The bloody coppers,” said Lewis. He thought for a moment and then added, “They’d do it, too.”

  Mr. Calder got up. He said, “I haven’t got a lot of time to waste. Do we deal or not?”

  “What’s the proposition?”

  “I want to know where that money came from. Who gave it to you. When and where and how. Details I can check up. You give me that, and the charge of receiving goods goes out of the window.”

  Sir James Docherty said to his wife, “I’m afraid I’m off on my travels. It’s Paris again.”

  “Oh dear,” said Lady Docherty. “So soon.”

  “Needs must, when public duty calls. Is there any more coffee in that pot?”

  “I can squeeze another cup. Who is it this time?”

  “I’ve got semi-official talks with de Bessières at the Quai d’Orsay. There are occasions . . .” Sir James dropped two lumps of sugar into his coffee”. . . when the French Government finds it easier to make unofficial suggestions to a member of the Opposition than to the Government. Then they can disclaim them if things don’t work out.”

  “I’m sure they like talking to you because they know that you’ll be Foreign Minister as soon as the electorate comes to its senses.”

  “Maybe,” said Sir James. “I’ll be taking Robin with me.”

  A faint shadow crossed Lady Docherty’s face.

  “Do you really think you ought to, James?” she said. “He’s been away such a lot. Four times to France, and those trips to the Midlands . . .”

  “My dear,” said Sir James, “you’re talking as though they were holiday jaunts. He’s not wasting his time, you know. He’s studying political economy. And what better way to study political economy than to see it in action? When he comes to France with me, he meets important people. People who matter. He can see the wheels of international politics turning. When he goes to the Midlands, it’s with an object. To study these industrial strikes at first hand.”

  “Those terrible strikes. Why do they do it?”

  “You mustn’t assume,” said Sir James, scooping the sugar out of the bottom of the cup with his spoon, “that the faults are all on one side. The managements can be quite as bloody-minded as the workers. More so, sometimes. Particularly the American ones.”

  In the next forty-eight hours, a lot of apparently disconnected activities took place. Mr. Calder spent the time working as a porter in Covent Garden, helping to load the lorries of an old friend of his in the fruit trade. His spare time was divided between betting shops and public houses, neither of which are in short supply in that neighbourhood. The money he made in the former he spent in the latter.

  Mr. Behrens, who had reserved a room at the Hôtel Continental in the Place Languedoc, spent his time making friends with the hotel staff.

  Young Robin Docherty had a prickly interview with his class tutor at the London School of Economics. The tutor said that if Robin spent all of his time running errands for his father in the Midlands and trotting across to Paris with him in the intervals, he was most unlikely to complete the scholastic side of his studies satisfactorily.

  The Home Secretary answered two questions and three supplementaries about the strikes and disturbances which were paralysing the motor industry. And Mr. Fortescue attended to the customers at the Westminster Branch of the London and Home Counties Bank, granting one overdraft and refusing two.

  To him, on the third day, came Mr. Calder.

  Mr. Calder said, “What Lewis told us has been checked. I don’t know how the money gets into this country from France, but as soon as it does get here it’s taken to a betting-shop in Covent Garden. The action committee meets in the back room of a pub, just down the road. It’s on their instructions that the cash payments are handed out from the bookmakers. That’s as far as I’ve been able to get. I can’t get any closer to these people. Some of them know me.”

  Mr. Fortescue considered the matter, rotating a silver pencil slowly in his hand as he did so. Then he said, “If you’ve evidence that stolen money is passing through this betting-shop, there should be no difficulty about getting permission to listen in to their telephone.”

  “You ought to get some usefu
l tips from the course,” said Mr. Calder.

  Mr. Fortescue did not smile. His eyes were on his pencil. “Some sort of arrangements must be made for the reception of the money.”

  “That probably takes place after the shop’s shut. There’s a back entrance.”

  “No doubt. What I mean is, they must know when to expect the money, and who’s going to bring it. If we could find that out, we could put our finger on the courier. Then we might be able to track back, from him, to the person who brings it across the Channel. We shall have to do it very carefully.”

  “You will indeed,” said Mr. Calder. “These boys have got eyes in the backs of their heads.”

  It was exactly a week later when Mr. Fortescue called, by arrangement, on the Home Secretary and made his report.

  He said, “When you gave us permission to listen in to that betting-shop, we started to make some real progress. It was the calls after hours that interested us. They were very guarded and they came through different intermediaries, but we were able to trace them back to their ultimate source.”

  “To the carrier of the money?”

  “To his house.”

  “Excellent. Who is the man?”

  “The owner of the house,” said Mr. Fortescue, with a completely impassive face, “is Sir James Docherty.”

  For a moment this failed to register. Then the Home Secretary swung round, his face going red. “If that’s a joke . . .” he said.

  “It’s not a joke. It’s a fact. The point of origin of these messages is Sir James’ house in Eaton Terrace. Sir James also happens to be a member – a founder member – of the Peaceful People. Taken alone, I agree, neither of these facts is conclusive.”

  “Taken together, they’re still inconclusive. You told me that the Peaceful People were backing their action committee with money. The messages might have been about that.”

  “They might have been,” said Mr. Fortescue, “but they weren’t. They had nothing to do with the official business of the society at all. And here are two other facts. One of my men has been making enquiries in Paris. He has established that there is a regular courier service between the Chinese Trade Commission and the Hôtel Continental. Which happens to be Sir James’ regular pied-à-terre in Paris. Add to that the fact that Sir James’ visits are usually arranged at official level. And that this enables him to bring in his valise, which is said to carry official papers, under the diplomatic exemption arrangements.”

  The Home Secretary said, “Do you really believe, Fortescue, that a man in Sir James’ position would lend himself to smuggling currency – a criminal manoeuvre?”

  “Whether I believed it,” said Mr. Fortescue cautiously, “would depend, in the last analysis, on my estimate of Sir James’ character.”

  The Home Secretary turned this reply over in his mind for a few moments. Then he grunted and said, “He’s a loud-mouthed brute, I agree. And I loathe his politics. But that doesn’t make him a crook.”

  “I am told that he is something of a domestic tyrant. I would not assert that he beats his wife, but she certainly goes in considerable awe of him. His only son, Robin, has been forced to study political economy, and is dragged round at his father’s chariot wheels, no doubt destined to be turned into a junior model in due course.”

  “And that’s our next Foreign Secretary. A Palmerstonian Fascist, with a taste for gun-boat diplomacy. What do you want to do? Tap his outgoing calls?”

  “Yes. And have his mail opened. And have him watched, day and night, in England and in France. If he’s our man he’ll slip up sooner or later, and we’ve got to be there to catch him when he falls.”

  “If he’s our man,” said the Home Secretary. “And if he isn’t, by any chance, and if he finds out what we’re doing – there’ll be an explosion which will rock Whitehall from end to end.”

  “So I should imagine.”

  “The first head that will roll will be mine. But make no mistake about it, Fortescue. The second will be yours.”

  The young Customs officer at Heathrow Airport produced a printed form and said, “You know the regulations, sir?”

  “Since I have travelled backwards and forwards to Paris some twelve times this year,” said Sir James Docherty, “I think you may assume I have a nodding acquaintance with the regulations. Yes.”

  “And have you made any purchases while you were abroad?”

  “None whatever.”

  “Or acquired any currency?”

  Sir James looked up sharply and said, “I don’t acquire currency when I travel. I spend it.”

  “I see, sir. Then would you mind opening this valise?”

  “I would mind very much.”

  “I’m afraid you must, sir.”

  “Perhaps you would be good enough to examine the seal on the lock. I take it you are capable of recognising an embassy seal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And perhaps you would also read this note from our ambassador, requesting you to confer the customary exemption from search on this bag, which, I might add, contains important diplomatic documents.”

  The Customs officer glanced at the letter and handed it to the thick-set man in a raincoat who was standing beside the counter. This man said, “I’m afraid, sir, that I have an order here, signed by the Home Secretary, over-riding the ambassador’s request.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Calder.”

  “Then let me tell you, Mr. Calder . . .”

  “I think we ought to finish this in private.”

  Sir James started to say that he was damned if he would, realised that he was shouting and that people were starting to look at him, and resumed his public relations manner.

  “If you wish to continue this farce,” he said in a choked voice, “by all means let us do it in private.”

  “But it wasn’t a farce,” said Mr. Calder. “There was £2,000 in fivers, stowed away flat at the bottom of his valise.”

  “What explanation did he give?”

  “He was past rational explanation. He screamed a bit, and stamped and foamed at the mouth. Literally. I thought he might be having some form of fit.”

  “But no explanation?”

  “I gathered, in the end, that he said someone must have been tampering with his baggage. Frame-up. Police state. Gestapo. That sort of line.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Fortescue. He said it so flatly that it made Mr. Calder look up.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “I gather,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that Sir James managed to persuade our masters that we have made a very grave mistake.”

  “But, good God! I saw the notes. We all did. How does he suggest they got there?”

  “He suggests,” said Mr. Fortescue sadly, “that Behrens put them there. I am seeing the Home Secretary in an hour’s time. I rather fear that we may be in for trouble.”

  “Incredible though it may seem,” said the Home Secretary, “it really does appear that the one person who can’t have put the money there was Sir James himself – unless he bribed half the ambassador’s private staff.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “Our ambassador had a highly confidential document – a memorandum in the General’s own hand – and Sir James offered to act as courier. The Head of Chancery put the document in Sir James’ valise – which was almost empty, as it happens – saw it sealed, and handed it to the ambassador’s secretary, who took it back to the hotel and himself saw it locked up in Sir James’ bedroom. The secretary didn’t leave the hotel. He stayed there, lunched with young Robin, and the two of them escorted the valise to the airport.”

  “And what was Sir James doing all this time?”

  ‘’Sir James was having lunch with our ambassador, the French Minister of the Interior, and the French Minister of the Interior’s wife.”

  “How exactly is it suggested that the notes got into the valise?”

  “There’s no mystery about that. Microsco
pic examination of the seal – what was left of it – shows that it had been removed, whole, with a hot knife and re-fixed with adhesive. Probably during the lunch hour.”

  “And it’s suggested that Behrens did that?”

  “He was at the hotel.”

  “So were two hundred other people.”

  “You don’t think, Fortescue, that he might—just conceivably . . . thinking he was being helpful?”

  Mr. Fortescue said, “I have known Behrens for thirty years, Home Secretary. The suggestion is ludicrous.” After a pause he added, “What is Sir James going to do?”

  “He’s been to the PM. He wants the people responsible discovered, and dealt with.”

  Mr. Fortescue smiled a wintry smile. He said, “I do not often find myself in agreement with Sir James, but that sentiment is one with which I heartily concur. I shall need to make an immediate telephone call to Paris.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t catch Behrens. He’s on his way back at this moment.”

  “Excellent,” said Mr. Fortescue. He seemed to have recovered his good humour. “Excellent. We may need him. The person I wished to speak to was the ambassador’s private secretary. Perhaps your office could arrange it for me? Oh, and the manager of the Hotel Continental. Then we must have Behrens intercepted at the airport and brought straight round to Sir James’ house, to meet me there.””You’re going to see Sir James?”

  “I have really no alternative,” said Mr. Fortescue genially. “In his present mood he would certainly not come to see us, would he?”

  Sir James was at ease, in front of his drawing room fire, the bottom button of his waistcoat undone, a glass of port in one hand, an admiring audience of two, consisting of wife and son, hanging on every word.